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1838.

CHAP. prices will not yield a profit. Thus strikes are constantly XXXVII. successful when they take place with a rising market, and as uniformly unsuccessful when they are ventured upon with a falling; and it is because the workmen cannot be brought to see the difference of these situations that they occur so often, and, under circumstances evidently hopeless, are adhered to with such pertinacity. For the same reason, they may be expected to occur most frequently in a community in which, from the alternate expansions and contractions of the currency, prices frequently, and for a long period together, rise and fall, and are in truth the sad bequest of that system of monetary policy to the labouring classes of the community.

60.

There is a very curious regulation general in all comInstitution binations among colliers and iron-miners, singularly chaof the Darg. racteristic of the levelling tendency of democratic institu

tions where they are fully developed. This is the Darg, as it is technically called, or quantity of minerals which, and no more, each working man is allowed to put out. It is fixed at a very moderate amount-equal only to what indifferent workmen can accomplish in eight or ten hours' labour. The strongest and most active are not permitted to do more, and hence the best workmen are forcibly retained at the level of the inferior ones. Capable of earning 7s. 6d. a-day, they are constrained by the majority to limit themselves to 4s. or 5s., as the general rate of wages may be. If a regulation of this tyrannical nature were to be proposed by the masters, they would make the empire ring with it from side to side: but being established by themselves, it is submitted to without an open, though many a secret murmur; and as the majority of all bodies of men are indolent or inefficient, it is generally established and quietly acquiesced in. It is an instance of the tyranny of the democracy of unskilled over the aristocracy of skilled labour; and is the result of the same feeling which causes intellectual superiority, when not entirely subservient to the popular will, to be so

generally the object of jealousy in democratic commu- CHAP. nities.

XXXVII.

1838.

required in

against the

evil.

There is one way, and one only, of preventing the ter- 61. rible evils of these combinations, and that is, to be pre- What is pared for them. The whole reliance of their leaders is on these cases intimidation and violence, which, always disavowed in the to guard outset, is always practised in the end. Make no attempt to coerce or prevent such strikes by legal measures. Allow them full liberty of action so far as they themselves are concerned, but secure to others, who are not inclined to go into their measures, the same rights which they assert for their own body. Nothing can effect this but a strong and previously established civil force. No great or expensive establishment is required for this purpose; but one is absolutely required of a certain magnitude, and constantly ready for action. Military, admirable as a reserve, are not alone sufficient; it is a powerful civil force, capable of being directed at will by Government to the menaced district, which is required. Fifteen hundred or two thousand men, regularly drilled, and ready to be called out like firemen when the occasion requires, would be ample for this purpose; for, suddenly directed to the endangered district, they would, if supported by one or two regiments, amply suffice to prevent intimidation, and thereby cut short the strike which relies on such methods of gaining its points. The expense would not exceed £75,000 or £100,000 a-year—not a fifth part of that which every one of these disastrous struggles costs the community, independent altogether of the widespread suffering and fearful demoralisation which they invariably occasion.*

* At the moment in which these lines are written (28th May 1856), a strike of colliers and iron-miners in Lanarkshire, and the two adjoining counties of Linlithgow and Ayr, embracing 35,000 workmen, has continued above three months, kept 120,000 persons, including families, during all that time, in a state of penury and idleness, and cost Scotland at least £700,000! The strike of colliers in 1837, in Lanarkshire, cost the nation £400,000; that of the cottonspinners, which led to the proceedings mentioned in the text, £230,000 in the same year! The strike of colliers in the same county, in 1842, lasted four months, and cost the nation at least £500,000; that of the same body, in 1848, nearly us much; and on the last occasion, the men struck because offered only

CHAP. XXXVII.

1839.

62. Rise of Chartism from the

ral distress.

Combinations among workmen, how great soever a social evil, do not necessarily lead to disaffection toward the Government; on the contrary, they often coexist with the strongest feelings of loyalty towards the sovereign. Being directed against the employers, not the constituted same gene- authorities, they may go on for some time without being merged in political discontent. But the transition is easy from the one to the other, the more especially as they both spring from the same cause, viz. the experience of suffering or disappointment, owing to change of prices, among the working classes. The machinery got up, and often so successfully worked, to effect a rise or prevent a reduction of wages, can by an easy transfer be directed against the Government; there can be a "secret select" to get quit of a sovereign, as well as to murder an obnoxious master or terrify a refractory fellow-workman. It is not surprising, therefore, that the same long-continued suffering which produced such formidable trades-unions in 1837 and 1838, should have led also to a serious political combination. Hence the rise of CHARTISM, which, in these melancholy years, spread its roots widely among the manufacturing and mining districts, and came at length to embrace nearly the whole working classes in these employments in every part of the country. Suffering was so general--it may be said universal-from the low rate of wages, the rigorous execution of the new poorlaw, and the numerous insolvencies among the employers, that the working classes were driven well-nigh to desperation, and led to lend a willing ear to those artful dema

4s. a-day, and came in, after 7 months' idleness, at 2s. 9d. The great strike at Preston, in 1854, lasted 37 weeks, involved 15,000 persons in misery, and occasioned an enormous loss. No one, not practically acquainted with these matters, can conceive the misery and demoralisation these long periods of idleness produce; the sad bequest of a currency dependent on the retention of gold, which, in the nature of things, cannot be always retained. Whenever the Author sees a serious drain of gold setting in on the Bank of England, he anticipates, at no distant period, a protracted strike; and he has never, dur ing thirty years, been wrong in his predictions on that matter.

XXXVII.

1839.

gogues who represented it as entirely owing to the weight CHAP. of taxes and the profligate expenditure of Government, and that the only remedy for it was to be found in the general emancipation of industry and reduction of burdens, by vesting the entire direction of affairs in the hands of the people. They did not propose to dethrone the sovereign, or openly establish a commonwealth it was "a throne surrounded by republican institutions" which was the object of their desire. Their demands were reduced to six, styled the "Six Points of the Charter," which became the watchword of the discontented in every part of the empire, and never ceased to agitate the country with more or less violence, till the hostility of the middle classes to those changes was clearly evinced during the general convulsion of 1848, and the cause of suffering and consequent discontent was removed by the huge banks of issue opened by Providence in California and Australia.

of the

63.

and causes

These Six Points, which became so well known in English history, were-1st, Universal Suffrage; 2d, Vote Six points by Ballot; 3d, Paid Representatives in Parliament; Charter, 4th, Equal Electoral Districts; 5th, The Abolition of a of their poProperty Qualification; 6th, Annual Parliaments. These pularity. principles were not new in social history; they were nothing but a brief summary of those which had desolated France and Spain, and from the first dawn of civilisation had been more or less contended for wherever free

dom had spread its roots. But the universal suffering of the working classes rendered their reception much more easy and general at this time than they had ever before been in English history. Suffering led to its natural result, general discontent. So general did this discontent become, that an organisation of Chartists took place over the whole manufacturing cities of the empire, for the purpose of electing deputies, who were to represent the whole body in a national convention,

XXXVII.

1839.

CHAP. which was to sit in London, and which would soon, it was hoped, come to supersede the legitimate Parliament. An enormous petition, professing to be signed by 1,200,000 Chartists, and certainly bearing that number of names, was presented to the House of Commons by Mr Attwood, on 14th June 1839. But from the proof obtained, ten years afterwards, of the way in which petitions 1Spectator, of that description were got up, and false signatures Ann. Reg. appended to them, to be hereafter detailed, it may be ii. 304, 411. doubted whether the real signatures ever amounted to half the number.1

1839, 557;

1839; Mart.

64.

of the Chartist hostility.

Although the Chartists professed, and really desired, Real objects great political as well as social changes, yet the former were considered by them only a step to the latter. The movement was essentially social, and it was directed rather against the capitalists than the Government. As such it merits very particular attention, for it was the first indication which appeared in this country of the SoCIALIST AGITATION which, ten years after, overturned the Government of Louis Philippe, and worked such important effects on the monarchy of France. The object of the Chartists was, at bottom, to obtain a new distribution of the profits of manufacturing or mining industry. The movement did not extend to the agricultural districts, and the rural population remained from first to last almost entire strangers to it. Their real hostility was against the capitalist, whom they regarded as a middleman, interposed between them and the purchasers of the produce of their industry, and who succeeded in realising enormous profits at their expense. The profits of stock they regarded as an unjust and improper deduction from the remuneration of industry, which should extend to the whole price of its produce, under deduction of the cost of 1839, 304, the raw material.2 On these principles they kept studiously aloof from the movement which, from the exces

2 Ann. Reg.

305; Mart. ii. 411.

sively high price of provisions, had begun against the Corn

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